The effort could snatch a victory from Gov. Martin O'Malley, who is being lauded by his party nationally for creating a map that gives Democrats a good chance of picking up a Congressional seat this fall. And it could give the state's minority Republican party new standing in Annapolis, showing that they can threaten "inside baseball" laws in addition to headline grabbing ones like in-state tuition for some illegal immigrants and same-sex marriage.

But if the group succeeds in collecting 55,736 signatures, voters will have a chance to overturn it and force the General Assembly to redraw the map for the 2014 election. Organizers hoped to exceed the number by a substantial margin to account for the 10 percent of signatures likely to be discarded by state election officials because of various errors.

It remains far from certain that voters will ever have the chance to weigh-in. The Republicans fell short of their self-imposed goal of gathering 75,000 names. The opponents, at this point, has 7,294 more signatures than the 55,736 required to trigger the referendum.

The Democrats think they can pick up a seat? Does MD even have any Republicans left besides that old Tea Party guy who's concerned about peak oil (Bartlett)?

Yes, Andy Harris.

And for reasons of Democratic residency and of intra-party carveup of Baltimore area donors, they couldn't reduce his seat to rubble (and had to draw a hilariously ugly map to achieve the same thing a clean-looking one could have). So only the aged Sev will go.

I wish the Maryland Republicans the best of luck in their endeavour, by the way.

Logged

If I'm shown as having been active here recently it's either because I've been using the gallery, because I've been using the search engine looking up something from way back, or because I've been reading the most excellent UK by-elections thread again.

I would suspect that my name in the 'started by' column would clue you in, and save you from some rude keystrokes.

No; I didn't even see your name. This subject was the most recent post when I was scrolling through the main Forum page, so I only saw the headline and Happy Warrior's name (because he had the last post).

This is kind of late to do now. The only other district the Republicans could competitive for would be Dutch Ruspersberger seat in Maryland 3 I think. I think Van Hollen's district(MD-04)is now solidly Democratic. The Republicans were very lucky to win that seat all those years with Connie Morella. I don't know if the Republicans could be competitive in John Sarbanes seat even without the gerrymandering that has happened 2 straight times with that district. I mean that district is an Annapolis based district and has some outer parts of Eastern Baltimore in it. Maybe if you included the town of Glen Burnie in it?

I noticed in that redistricting how some of Elijah Cummings district got moved north over by Van Hollen's district. Cummings current district has some parts of Baltimore, and the towns of Cantonsville, and Ellicot City in it. Basically most of Baltimore County in it I think.

They say they submitted 65,722 signatures by Saturday’s midnight deadline.

Opponents need to have 55,736 valid signatures. Parrott says he’s confident enough signatures will be verified as valid by the Maryland State Board of Elections, based on the percentage of verified signatures submitted in the past.

It will be interesting to see the people of Maryland vote on this gerrymandering.

It's not like Republicans wouldn't have drawn a gerrymander if they had control. Maryland's map isn't nearly as ridiculous as the maps of Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Well, in the Republican's defense, the Maryland map is very ugly.

But yeah, the Republicans promised a "fair" redistricting up in NC and look how that turned out...

Redistricting is often times a matter of vengeance. And the North Carolina GOP has 100 years of vengeance to enact.

The vengeance factor aside, it was still erroneous and hypocritical advertising on the part of the NCGOP. They said they'd draw a "fair" map; an intended 10-3 delegation from a 50/50 state isn't an equitable situation, no matter how you slice it.

I believe there is no legal authority to do so under Maryland law. They can merely use referendums to reject the laws passed by the legislature. The people are doing so for this redistricting plan as well as for marriage.

Something akin to what got Blago impeached and stuff. When you have something like this, it is a gold mine that you don't just give away. You sell seats to the highest bidder within the party and screw the other party out of as many as possible in order to have more "merchandise" to sell. Same as what happened across the border in PA.